Allied

Brad Pitt is great, Marion Cotillard is excellent, and Robert Zemeckis knows how to film a scene that will be aesthetically intriguing at first glance. He chose an interesting story for his next film, but I just couldn't get into it, and this otherwise strong dramatic romance just didn't quite captivate me. (10/02/2017)

Neither great nor terrible. As usual, the enemies run straight into the fire of the heroes, who are then able to leave the scene without any consequences. Then the film morphed into some sort of a romantic drama with war used only as a backdrop to the story. The situation was saved by the ending. A happy one would have clearly been unfortunate in this case. (09/04/2017)

Emotionally, it's a bit of a cold story that ironically, especially at first, moves quite slowly, but Zemeckis does repair his reputation after the botched The Walk, as Allied may not work as well as a romantic drama, but it certainly works as a WWII spy film. Brad Pitt, of course, as has been the case for the last 10 years, is appropriately wonderful, and Marion Cotillard is traditionally, by eye contact, properly inscrutable. It's not an exemplary hit, but it's filmmaking from a filmmaker who rarely gets it really wrong. It has all the classic filmmaking frameworks that meet at least the standard, plus an absolutely lavish form with at least three over-the-top sequences and a beautifully stylized Morocco set to Silvestri's music. (28/01/2017)

Allied is definitely a simplification of history, but in a nice retro-Hollywood guise that makes us turn a blind eye to that fact. It is surprisingly not tacky, dramatic bordering on chilling due to the atmosphere of the period in which the story takes place. It is also perfectly directed with cool professionalism and without the tear-jerking we might expect from Robert Zemeckis, and without any grand love motifs we might expect from Alan Silvestri. Because such a well-written script with such a powerful story doesn't need any of that. The ending totally got me. (07/02/2017)

Robert Zemeckis likes to dwell on the past, and all his famous films from the late 80s and early 90s are full of adventure, passion and joy that only the medium of cinema itself can convey. Romancing the Stone, Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Death Becomes Her... They always had a touch of the good old days. And Allied is indeed the good old days, referencing Casablanca, serving up action, espionage, romance, not even parodying the scenes with the Nazis, just nostalgically remembering the time we romantically idealize. (26/02/2022)